Saturday, January 19, 2008

The Chess Legend Bobby Fisher Dies

The chess legend, the essentric Robert James Fisher or better known as Bobby Fisher dies at the age of 64 in Iceland. (He was granted Icelandic citizenship in 2005 as a way to avoid being deported to the US. The reclusive player - who had renounced his US citizenship - had lived undetected in Japan for a number of years before moving to Iceland.)

His was reported ill for quite sometimes until later on thursday he pass away. His cause of death was, a suspected kidney failure.

The US-born player, who became famous for beating Cold War Soviet rival Boris Spassky in 1972. Then in 1975 he refused to play with Anatoly Karpov for the world title, which resulted the world champion title goes to Karpov. The eccentric US genius then simply disappeared, declining all lucrative sponsorship deals. But he surfaced later on to play in a re-match with Boris Spassky in 1992 in Yugoslavia in defiance of international sanctions. Then, he vanished again, and was heard living a number of years in Japan. Until a couple of years back he was reported to be in detention in Japan, and going to be extradite to US. (It was in Japan he was reported to fall in love with Japanese player... Miyoko Watai, she was once play against Nurul Huda W in the Zonal event in Genting)

To me though how many comments that he made, or what kind of life he has gone thru, let us all remember him as the man who won the world champ in the year where most of us will think it is impossible to break the ice of Russia. The match has made chess well known world wide, and automaticaly change the perspective of what the people think about chess! (now let us think about that..)